Unsolved slaying haunts family for 30 years

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SANTA ANA Every year around this time, Kathy Medina makes that same disheartening call, and every year she gets the same unfortunate answer.

It's been 30 years, but Medina is relentless.

It was about 4 p.m. on Feb. 11, 1983, when Medina's father, Fred Guedea, arrived at California Labor Camp in Irvine and was met by two gunmen who shot him to death and robbed him of $3,600 in a cash box as his wife, Sophie, ran for help. She was not injured.

Guedea and his wife would set up their card table at the camp at 11405 Jeffrey Road, where he cashed paychecks for farmworkers for a small fee.

It had been a three-year routine for the couple, but on that particular day they were met by the gunmen, who until now remain at large.

“Maybe after all these years, not that my dad will ever come back, somebody will come forward,” said Medina, now 55. “I want to know, are they sorry? Did they get scared?”

So every year around the anniversary of her father's death, Medina puts in a call to the Orange County Sheriff Department's homicide unit with a reminder of her father's case. Throughout the years, Guedea's case has been passed along to varying deputies, who all have the same answer. The case is never closed, they say, but there are no leads.

“It's very frustrating for me, too, because they have to look through the case again,” Medina added. “I'd like to see what they've been working on, what they've investigated, but they won't let me because it's still an unsolved case.”

‘it was horrible'

Without a cold-case unit, sheriff's homicide detectives pull cold cases only as resources and time become available.

In 2006, detectives followed up on a lead, but the person of interest had passed away years before, said Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Sheriff's Department.

The suspects were described as 25-year-old Latino men, about 5 feet, 6 inches tall, and weighing about 140 pounds. One had a dark complexion with a mustache, while the other had a light complexion with an acne-scarred face.

Amormino listed a few of the challenges in solving the 30-year-old case: “We have no positive identification of the suspects, time has passed, and other information has gone cold.”

But, despite these obstacles, Amormino said solving a case this old is not impossible. Anyone with information should come forward, he added.

“Somebody has to know something,” Amormino said.

For Sophie Guedea, now 80, catching the killers would force her to revisit that day when she ran for help, thinking that the gunmen were shooting at her.

It would mean reliving how she hurried back to her wounded husband lying on the dirt. How she couldn't utter a word. How she picked up his head and could do nothing but pray and cry and give her husband water.

When they arrived at the center that day, Guedea noticed a Ford Mustang-type of car parked on the side of the road.

“I told Fred, ‘Look at that car. It's strange,' ” Guedea said.

As soon as they parked their Toyota pickup, in which they were carrying $40,000 underneath a seat, one man approached Fred on the driver side, and the other moved toward Sophie.

“They said, ‘Are you the people that cash checks?' And we said ‘Yes,' ” Guedea recalled.

The men each pointed a gun at them and told them to get out. Fred Guedea apparently went to the back of the truck, and Sophie took off running.

Sophie heard the gunshots as she was running and thought they were aiming at her. She eventually hid behind the wheel of a parked car.

When she looked back, she saw the men walking toward the car.

“They weren't even running. They were just walking – awful the way they were walking,” Guedea remembered.

Once Sophie ran back and got to Fred, emergency crews arrived quickly and took Fred to Western Medical Center Santa Ana, where Sophie had to make the call to the family.

“She told us we needed to get down there, and I'll never forget it,” Medina said. “And then we buried him five days later on my third wedding anniversary.”

Involved in community

Fred Guedea was a community activist who participated in everything from Little League to the Knights of Columbus to the Catholic Church. The Guedeas had roots in Bakersfield but called Santa Ana home as of 1970.

Retiring after 20 years as a project manager for McDonnell Douglas, Fred ran a string of businesses with Sophie, starting with a hot dog stand called El Patio on Orangethorpe Avenue in Anaheim. He sold that to take over a corner grocery store on South Greenville Street in Santa Ana. The couple later sold the store and invested in a masonry company, which the family sold in 2005.

When the Guedeas owned the grocery store, farmworkers were bused to their market to cash their paychecks every two weeks and were a major part of their clientele.

“They would come to our little store, buy groceries and spend $30 on food and money orders to send to Mexico,” Medina said. “You get 15 guys, that's $1,500. Because of them, we were able to start our marble company, because of the money they traded with us.”

The new store owner no longer would cash the migrant workers' paychecks. So the Guedeas decided they would make the drive to Irvine and continue their service.

“My dad said to my mom, ‘You know we owe it to these guys,' ” Medina said.

Said Sophie Guedea: “He was an excellent person. He always tried to help people. I miss him a lot. And I still do to this day, but life has to go on.”

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